You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas. This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

Part of my summer reading is a book called The Ice Pick Surgeon, Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds perpetrated in the name pick surgeon. Murder, fraud, sabotage, piracy, and other dastardly deeds perpetrated

in the name of science. I found it in the true crime section of my bookstore, but it's written by

an author we've had on the show before in someone whose work I follow, because he's a great science

writer, Sam Keene. You know, we had this book on our kitchen table,

and my partner, Adam, walked by and he says, oh, you can't read that kind of stuff. That just

gives science a bad name. You know, we need to lift science up, especially now as it's so important

in what's happening in the world. But I wanted to explain to him, and I can't wait for

him to listen to this episode, that in fact, that's Sam's goal is to actually demonstrate how

they might be some bad actors within the scientific realm, but that just shows us how important

science is. And we need to learn from the ways in which science steers people wrong in terms of making

it better. Sam Keen is the New York Times best-selling author of a number of other books, including

The Bastard Brigade, Caesar's Last Breath, the tale of the dueling neurosurgeons, and many more.

He's won many awards for his writing. And he's been featured on

Radio Lab and All Things Considered and Inquiring Minds. And his own podcast, The Disappearing

Spoon, is also high up on the iTunes Science charts. Sam Kean, welcome back to Inquiring Minds.

Hi, thanks for having to be back.

So we had you back in our very first year, episode 38, where we talked about brains and the various

stories that you had uncovered of people whose brains are different and what we can learn

about our own from them. And here you are

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